


A Sum of Many Parts

by cloverfield



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Artificial Limbs, Disabled Character, KuroFai Olympics, M/M, Pre-Slash, Prosthetics, Recovery, References to past injuries, Team Sci Fi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 19:14:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4191711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloverfield/pseuds/cloverfield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sci Fi v.s. Fantasy Olympics fic for the prompt 'Repairman and Customer'. Piffle Corp sends their most skilled prosmech out to assist the unlikely hero of a subrail accident.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sum of Many Parts

**Author's Note:**

> As moderator of the 2015 KuroFai Olympics, I didn't intend on writing for any of the prompts, but due to a last minute schedule change I jumped in as an emergency sub. I wrote this fic in about ten hours, and edited it over the course of two days.

“—and if you slow the footage right about _here_ ,” says Tomoyo, and taps the holo twice so that it stutters into frame by frame mode, the grainy projection flickering above her desk, “you can see the _exact_ moment the hydraulics blow out.”

The holo is silent and of poor quality, grey-green security footage riddled with static and crackling into fuzziness as it jumps from second to second —the framerate of the tunnelcams has never been the best, no matter how much money Piffle Corp pours into its Observation and Protection Technology division— but it’s still clear enough to see the explosion as a stark white cloud of heat and billowing smoke that roars across the tunnel from its far end like a beast with jaws wide open. The tiny figure of the man standing in the face of it screams in soundless rage as he grabs onto the bumper of one of the trashed railcars scattered about, his fingers punching into battered metal as he heaves and strains against it one-handed. The holo image shakes as a concussive wave hits him and the screaming people in his shadow, but he does not stop; his elbow spits sparks and a jet of dark fluid that has to be coolant as its tubes blow and synthcables snap, fraying loose as the joint hyper-extends in ways it was never designed to—

—but the railcar rises, tips, _falls_ , slamming into the cracked permacrete walls and the wreckage of the upturned railcars to seal the breach in the barrier at the exact moment the explosion hits it. A hazy cloud blows out and across the projection, smoke and steam and fragmented debris in a great fog of flickering whiteness, and it obscures the tunnelcam point of view totally; the static in the image smashes into white snow, cutting out completely, and if Kurogane didn’t know for stone cold _fact_ every single civilian involved in the greatest subrail disaster the City of Shin-Tomoeda has ever seen survived, he would have said the man in the projection was dead.

“His name is Fai D’Fluorite,” says Tomoyo, rocking back in her chair as she turns her gaze back to Kurogane himself, her dark eyes clear and thoughtful; her desk hums a little as the holo vanishes, the projectors melting back into the cool grey metal surface and flattening out smoothly as the Piffle Corp logo ripples back into place across brushed nanosteel. “Thirty-three years old, Ceresian native, recently ex-Space Corps. He came down from the carrier locked in orbit planetside for a much-deserved holiday, after an honourable discharge for ten years of service. He’s been on Piffle World Satellite for six days, and in the Shin-Tomoeda Central Hospice for the past two, following the accident.” The look she gives him, and chases with a bright smile to match, is one Kurogane is very familiar with; a look that he has not, in all of his twenty-seven years of being her cousin, ever been able to say no to.

 _Fuck_ , thinks Kurogane, and says nothing as Tomoyo’s eyes get brighter, her smile wider.

“He saved _thirty-nine lives_ , Kurogane; turned what could have been a disaster into the kind of heroics that have holofilm studios sniffing around the production rights already. The _least_ Piffle Corp’s Research and Development Division can do is send out our best prosmech to fix up his arm, don’t you think?”

It’s not really an observation, or even a request; it’s the kind of order he can’t turn down, at least not without suffering a substantial cut to his quarterly research budget, _and_ making her pout at him like a broken-hearted child. Kurogane has seen the kind of hard-nosed money-grubbers who could squeeze blood from a stone bow down and capitulate beneath the weight of that pout, and as the youngest Piffle Corp CEO in the company’s four-hundred year history, she’s not afraid to use it either. So really his chances of resisting are slim to non-existent. Besides, he really fucking needs that budget; he’s got an apprentice now, and the kid’s blowing through parts faster than Kurogane can print them.

“Fine,” he grunts, and holds out his hand for the specdrive; he’ll have to go over the damage before he heads in to the hospice. Tomoyo slaps it into his hand with a smile, the specdrive a tiny gleaming speck of silicate against his palm.

“Thank you, Kurogane. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.” Her eyes are twinkling in that way they do when she’s really happy, and well, it’s not so bad to put that look on his little cousin’s face. Even if the way she claps her hands together joyfully is completely over the top. “I’ll give the hospice a call and let them know you’re on the way, shall I?”

* * *

Fai D’Fluorite —thirty-three years old, Ceresian native, recently ex-Space Corps— wakes in pain, as he has for the past two mornings, and immediately grabs for the nearest pillow to slam over his face. It hits with a clothy _whumph_ , memory foam quickly conforming to the shape of his face and leaving enough space around his mouth and nose to breathe, but it doesn’t make him feel any better for all that it blocks out the light pouring in through the shutters that opened as soon as morning rose. He breathes, slow and steady, and the vice that clamps his ribs tightens fractionally, enough to make him gasp against its steely squeeze.

The monitor by the bedside bleeps twice in warning, and then there is a soft _hiss-pop-ping!_ as it sends the signal for his IV-implant to discharge another dose of anaesthetics and muscle relaxants into his bloodstream. The chemical rush of it sweeps over him in a wash of soothing numbness that dulls the pain in his side instantly, seeping through once-broken bone and the empty remains of his prosthetic socket to numb the constant ache that has been his closest friend since the accident, but even if his mouth tastes like medical waste backwash and sticky cotton, it’s better than the alternative.

 _Alright. Sit up. Lie down all day and you’ll feel even worse_. Planting one hand in the sheets —his good hand, his _only_ hand— Fai hauls himself upright, hissing as the pain of moving frays across his vision in flashing white sparks; only the grit of his teeth and the firm press of his tongue against his upper palate stop him from cursing out loud. He shakes his hand free from the bedding, wobbling a bit as he grabs onto the hand-rope hanging down from the frame of his hospice bed and fists his fingers across the rubbery grip that moulds to the shape of them, and it takes the last scrap of strength he has in his aching torso to pull himself up and into a seated position against the headboard.

He’s gasping harshly by the time the white spots flickering across his vision fade, and the monitor by the bedside bleeps again, the sound urgent. It’s probably summoning a nurse.

“Shut up.” Even annoyed as he is, his voice is far too breathy, ringing soft and hollow in the empty room. He hasn’t the breath to curse it out like he wants to.

Fai tips his head against the headboard, breathing out in shallow huffs, and true to form the patter of footsteps down the hallway hits his ears; it’s less than a minute before the door to his room hisses open in a soft burst of sterilised air, Kobato appearing in the doorway with a worried smile. “Oh, Mr D’Fluorite! Please call for help if you need assistance sitting up!” She bustles across the room, all good intentions and sweet smiles, and Fai can’t do anything but smile back as she fusses over him, slotting pillows into place behind his back and adjusting the recline so that he sits against a slope. The tightness in his chest eases immediately, even beneath the constriction of bandages, and his lungs expand in blessed relief as his breathing comes easier.

“We’re here to take care of you, Mr D’Fluorite,” she chides him gently as she flicks dainty fingers through his monitor’s read-out, frowning at the spikes in his pain readings that cycle through the projected holo. “Please don’t make us worry, okay? I want you to remember to call us when you need assistance. The blue button on your monitor display, that’s the one you need to press to summon a nurse, and the next time you want to sit up, I’d like you to remember that, please.”

“Alright,” huffs Fai, because he has never been able to say no to a pretty young lady such as the one smiling at him now. “I’ll do my best.”

“That’s what I want to hear,” says Kobato happily, and she’s still smiling when she takes his hand, checking the sync between his IV-implant and his monitor as she fits in a new ampoule of anaesthetic into the dosage regulator. “We need you in good shape for your visitor today, so it’ll do you well to take it easy, okay?”

“Visitor?” says Fai, and almost doesn’t feel the sting of his implant spiking hair-thin needles into his veins, drawing out his hourly blood-check and flashing its results in green symbols across the display window. Whatever the display says, it must be good, because she hums in approval, tapping through the holo over his monitor and inputting new settings as the data changes.

“Mm-hm! Piffle Corp’s sending over a prosmech from their Research and Development division to have a look at your arm today! I got the call from Miss Daidouji herself— isn’t that great news?”

Fai supposes it is, especially since Piffle Corp have been covering all his medical expenses so far and it’s because of them that he’s even in such a high-class facility to recover. His pension from the Space Corps is frugal at best; he certainly wouldn’t have been able to afford this kind of treatment from his own funds, even if he dipped into his savings. Of course, technically it’s _because_ of Piffle Corp that he needs the medical attention in the first place —train derailment is not something one expects to encounter on a quick jaunt through the subrail system while on holiday, and preliminary reports seem to suggest some kind of software malfunction caused the system crash that took out the subrail signals, meaning responsibility for a narrowly averted disaster lands squarely at Piffle Corp’s feet— but Fai’s not going to argue. The compensation package he’d been offered is more than enough to set him up for the rest of his premature retirement, at least if he invests wisely, and if there is anything Fai has learnt over the years it’s to make the most of what you’re given before it’s taken away.

“Sounds good,” is what he says, and manages a smile for his nurse, even if he doesn’t quite feel it, and the look Kobato gives him is warm enough to make him glad he did.

“That’s the spirit!” says Kobato happily. She lays a gentle hand on his shoulder, squeezing softly, but is careful not to touch the socket. “Keeping a positive outlook can only help you heal faster, Mr D’Fluorite. Now, I want you to lie back and relax, and the prosmech will be here in no time.”

A last fluff of his pillows and she’s gone, leaving him alone with his thoughts and the monitor and the sunlight filtering through his shuttered windows. _It won’t be so bad. Once you get fixed up with a new prosthetic, you’ll feel like a new man._ It’s not the most convincing pep-talk, but it’s the best he can manage with the ache in his ribs a vice and the hollow emptiness of his shoulder hanging heavy on his mind. _Everything will be alright._ _Everything will be alright._ Perhaps if he repeats it enough, he’ll start to believe it.

* * *

Kurogane reaches Shin-Tomoeda hospice just after midday, and it’s no moonwalk dragging his repair kit all the way from his workshop and up the ramps to the hospice reception desk; maybe he _should_ let Syaoran install hovers in the bottom of the damn thing like his bratty little apprentice has been babbling on about for the past few weeks, ‘cause even on wheels six trays of tools and parts is fucking heavy. The nurses there mark him as an authorised Piffle Corp worker on sight, so at least no one questions why a bad-tempered prosmech is stomping through the doors when the kind of patients he normally sees aren’t the sort to get treatment in a civilian hospice of all places, and the bright young nurse that meets him at the desk leads him down the hallway without making him sign any paperwork.

“We had word from Miss Daidouji you’d be in, and she sent through a holo with your ID. It’s nice to meet you, Mr Suwano; I hope you can help Mr D’Fluorite. We heard all about what he did at the site of the subrail accident- to think he just lifted up the railcar and saved everyone, even when it blew out his prosthetics! He’s such a _hero_ ,” she says, and goes on like that for the next five damn minutes as she takes him down to the third floor, chatting the whole time. The fact that Kurogane only responds in grunts and vaguely monosyllabic answers doesn’t seem to bother her, either. It’s not exactly bad what she says, going on about how one of the people rescued from the site was pregnant and gave birth last night to healthy twins, and how the little four year old who’d been riding the subrail with their grandparents only had a bump on the head and a few bruises, nothing worse, but it’s a distraction to the joint hydraulics plans he’s been thinking about since Tomoyo gave him this commission in the first place, so he’s not exactly paying attention.

Which is why Kurogane starts when the nurse —Kobato, according to her name tag, though he suspects the little dove sticker isn’t exactly hospice issue— stops in front of the last room at the end of the hall. “This is Mr D’Fluorite’s room. I’ll just see if he’s awake and ready,” she says, and pops the door switch, stepping through when it hisses open.

Kurogane rubs his hand over his face, licks his lips to chase away the taste of sterilised air and disinfectant, and tries not to shuffle awkwardly from foot to foot while waiting for her to come back. He just about jumps out of his company-branded steelcaps when she pops her head back through the doorway all the same, beaming brightly up at him with the kind of smile that belongs in a nursery or a kindergarten; some place where children can see it and grow tall beneath its warmth. “Mr D’Fluorite is ready for you, Mr Suwano. I’ll leave you to it, shall I? If you need me, all you have to do is press the blue call button on the monitor display, okay?”

She leaves him with a wave, bouncing down the hall with a cheerful smile, and her voice echoing a wish for luck as Kurogane shoves his repair kit into the room and takes stock of what he sees as he follows it through.

He’s blonde, like most Ceresians; pale of hair and skin and with fine-boned features that should be attractive, and still are even beneath the discolouring bruises and swelling where the concussive impact of the explosion would have thrown him off his feet, and slammed him against the ground. Even from across the room Kurogane can see the dark circles under his eyes from a broken nose recently set. He’s tall too, a length of limb in the lanky frame sprawled out across a reclining mattress that would translate to considerable height when standing, but he’d probably come no higher than Kurogane’s shoulder even so. Which still puts him above average, anyway. And he’s _tired_ ; Kurogane can see _that_ as clear as anything in the blue eyes that come to rest on his face, and it’s the kind of tiredness bruises and bandages and poor sleep in a hospice bed don’t account for on their own.

“You D’Fluorite?” he says, after a long moment. His bedside manner is not the best, but he’s not here to be _nice_ , he’s here to patch up the heroic idiot who blew out a standard-issue Ceresian Space Corps prosthetic tipping up a railcar that had to have weighed at least three tonnes, even with the hollow carbonshell it was made from. And sure the railcars Piffle Corp designed are light enough to hover over the magrails, yeah, but they’re not exactly bouyant enough anyone could reasonably think of tipping the damn thing up like a shield. Even if D’Fluorite did just that and saved thirty-nine lives —forty-one now that two kids have been born to a survivor— in the doing so. The kind of basic tech the pale-faced man reclining across the room has grafted to his torso isn’t meant to perform strength stunts like that, so no wonder his fucking elbow joint burst like a squashed plum under the pressure.

“Ah, yes,” says D’Fluorite slowly. He sounds breathy, voice thin; not surprising if the damage specs Kurogane was looking over last night were accurate. “That would be me. Fai D’Fluorite, at your service, Mr…?” His shoulder dips, as though to hold out a hand for Kurogane to shake, but the arm he would move is the one that’s missing, carved clean from his shoulder, and for a moment the expression on D’Fluorite’s face stutters like a bad holofeed. “Ah,” he says again, swallowing hard enough his throat bobs, and the twinge in Kurogane’s chest that makes him cross the room, shoving his heavy-as-fuck repair kit across the floor with a rattle, is nothing like pity.

“Suwano. Call me Kurogane, everyone else does,” he grunts, shoving over the visitor’s chair and dropping into it gracelessly. “Lay back so I can look at you.”

D’Fluorite does as he’s told, fair hair falling across his face in a dishevelled mess that somehow looks more artful than any high-styled and coiffed model, and his eyes close as his head hits the padded rest on the headboard. Kobato had unbuttoned his hospice smock, leaving the mint-green fabric open and exposing the lines of silver-threaded infection-resistant gauze that cross his chest and torso, but if Kurogane’s going to get a good look at the implants grafted onto skin and bone he’s going to need to take the whole thing off. Still, even half wrapped in bandages, he can see the familiar lines and shapes of a class-three prosthesis, and it’s how much of it that D’Fluorite has that make him _tch_ through his teeth.

Six or so ribs, the whole of his scapula and acromion process, his clavicle, and a fair bit of tissue besides; nearly all his ligaments on his right side would have to be synthcables, if he were to have the kind of movement Kurogane witnessed in the tunnelcam footage. And if he was in that bad a shape to need so much replaced when he first got hurt, the lung beneath the pectoral muscle is probably an artificial one too. It’s not a small prosthetic, not by any standard; if it’s not the worst Kurogane has seen in a while, it’s getting pretty fucking close. Losing all of that probably would have killed him twenty years ago, but then that’s the thing about medical technology: even as people find more and more stupid ways to get themselves hurt, other people keep coming up with more and more ways to patch them back up.

“Do you need me to take this off?” asks D’Fluorite, the words whistling a little. Judging by the bruises Kurogane can see mottling his skin like he’s been a punch bag for a cage-fighter, he’s not fucking surprised he can’t breathe well.

“In a minute,” says Kurogane, because he’s not gonna make this man move more than he has to, and there’s stuff he can check before he starts peeling bandages off. “Stay still; I’ll scan you first.” The scanner confirms what he thought about the lung and the synthcables, and D’Fluorite breathes out tight and steady as Kurogane passes the laser reader up and across his upper body, the holo projection above it rotating slowly as it calculates the extent of the damage to flesh and bone and the prosthesis replacing it. _Fuck me, that’s eight ribs and your sternum too; you must have been cracked open like a crabshell._ “Tell me,” he says when he’s done, and D’Fluorite is staring at the gently revolving holo with a haunted look pinched across his thin face. “Exactly how the _fuck_ did you get this hurt anyway?”

Tact and good manners would suggest Kurogane not even _ask_ in the first place, but he doesn’t have time for that when it gets in the way of what he has to do, and the look on D’Fluorite’s face as he chokes out a startled laugh is the most open thing Kurogane has seen since he walked in the room. “Excuse me?”

“You lost an arm, most of your ribs, and a lung. What the hell did you do to end up like that?” D’Fluorite’s face clears at the question, that tight look fading from his eyes and his thin mouth falling into a crooked half-smile thing that is more fetching than it has a right to be, especially considering most of his face is bruised green and yellow. Kurogane grunts and looks away, fishing out his ausculator and pressing the bell to D’Fluorite’s chest as he pops in the earpiece. “Take three deep breaths for me. I wanna hear your lungs expand.”

“There was an… accident.” D’Fluorite gulps in a breath, his chest expanding broader and deeper than Kurogane would have expected for so many bandages. “A recon vehicle rolled on top of me during war-games on Valeria,” he clarifies, because Kurogane glares at him at the half-assed answer he gets, and keeps glaring until D’Fluorite takes another breath. “I shoved a friend out of the way of a mine that went off —it was supposed to be a dud, not a live round— and took the brunt of it when our recon vehicle rolled.” A third breath, and still no rattle; no catching or ticking in the slow hum of the bioelectrics stitched into his thoracic cavity, and that’s what Kurogane wants to hear. “It fell on an angle though, so it only really got me in the chest.” There’s no hesitance in his voice, even if it is husky, and maybe this is the first time he’s talked about it since he looks almost startled to be speaking. “That was about six years ago. Took two years of rehab before they let me back on the ship, and then by the time my tour of service was up, they said I was…well, too broken to come back for another one.”

There’s a strange inflection in that lilting voice; something Kurogane doesn’t know the man well enough to understand, and _broken_ isn’t exactly the word he’d use, either. “And then you went and got yourself blown up in a subrail tunnel on holiday,” he says flatly, bundling up his ausculator and shoving it back in the appropriate drawer. Even to his own ears, he doesn’t sound impressed, and he isn’t.

D’Fluorite laughs, the sound a rasp, but something in it is bright and clean, enough that the fine hair raises on the nape of Kurogane’s neck. “I guess so. You don’t sound awfully impressed with me, Mr Suwano.”

“Call me Kurogane, I said,” grunts Kurogane, and he still _isn’t_ , even if D’Fluorite is smiling at him now; it’s a nice smile, even with the bruises, but it doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “And you bet your remaining ribs I’m not. Sounds like you’ve got a knack for trouble following you— you should be more careful with yourself. Can’t make prosthetics for all of you, you know; you still need flesh and bone to attach ‘em to. Still,” he adds begrudgingly, “you did save all those people.” That’s probably the most impressive thing about it, if any of it is; how D’Fluorite looked up that tunnel at the smoking death approaching him and the nearly forty people crouched in the rubble behind him and screamed it down. Kurogane can admire that, if he can admire anything about the man. And he did flip a railcar. Kurogane’s not weak, not by any measure you care to name, but to keep going like that even when you’ve been so badly hurt before —when your steel bones are breaking and your synthetic muscles are fraying under the strain— is _something_ , all right. Something strong.

“There was a little girl, and it was her birthday,” says D’Fluorite softly, looking down at his hand. It’s as pale as the rest of him, his fingertips rough and purpling. He’s missing two fingernails. “She showed me her card, just before we went through the tunnel and everything went wrong. It had a ballerina holo on it, and it— it played a tune.” It’s little things like that that stick in the mind, Kurogane knows; tiny details that linger long after the big stuff has faded into the dust of memory. He’s got enough of those little things of his own: the scent of his mother’s favourite tea rising from the kettle as she poured it, the way his father used to hum little broken snatches of tunes as he swept the dojo floor, the pattern of the tree-shade that fell on the balcony in the evening. Things you won’t, _can’t_ forget, even years and years later.

“Hn,” is what Kurogane says though, because he’s not here to talk about it. “I’m gonna get a look beneath those bandages now.” D’Fluorite seems to shudder as he tries to sit up, enough that Kurogane stands without thinking, placing a hand on his back and chest and easing him upright. He feels cold beneath the bandages, enough that Kurogane is almost worried, but the monitor by the bedside is beeping steadily, no alarms going off like they would for severe pain or damage. The smock and the bandages come off easily, no sticking or catching on open wounds, and Kurogane supposes that’s something to be grateful for; he doesn’t need to get a nurse in here to clean up any fresh bleeding.

Once D’Fluorite is stripped to his waist, Kurogane helps ease him back down against the recliner. The strength of the grip on his shoulder as D’Fluorite grabs for balance is fierce, thin fingers stronger than they look, but the muscle cording his remaining, skinny arm is sign enough this man is every inch the soldier his ID makes him out to be. He’s all muscle and bone and scars where the prosthetics meet flesh; a criss-cross mash across his torso that must embarrass him, if the flush that creeps up his face and spills down his throat pinkly is sign enough. They’re not small, and there’s a lot of them; they look like they were agonising once, and maybe D’Fluorite can feel that knowledge in the way Kurogane looks at him, because he swallows and looks away. “I don’t. I don’t take my shirt off much.”

“No shit, D’Fluorite. You’ve got a night-worker’s tan,” says Kurogane bluntly. He doesn’t do pity, and he’s seen worse scars than this. _Has_ worse scars than this, though not by much.

D’Fluorite laughs at that, a bark of sound that startles them both, and the smirk that curls Kurogane’s lip meets its twin in the twitch of pale, thin lips. “Fai,” he says, still not looking Kurogane. “You’ve taken my clothes off; the least you can do is call me by my given name.” There’s a playful quirk to feathery eyebrows that suggests it’s not the worst quip he could have come out with.

“Left you your pants, didn’t I?” grunts Kurogane, because he does ashamed just as well as he does pitying. Before Fai can say something smart to that, Kurogane’s already grabbing for a squirt of sanitiser from his repair kit, rubbing the cool gel into his hands before snapping on clean gloves. “Fine. Still an idiot no matter what I call you.” Fai’s ribs rise and fall gently under his fingers, in a pattern that says he’s still laughing even if he’s making no sound about it, but it doesn’t last long, not when Kurogane’s fingers probe along the subdermal cabling that webs out from his empty shoulder socket, testing for loose wires. Fai hisses instead then, a long slow stream of air through gritted teeth that has nothing to do with the chill of the latex on bare skin.

“Nothing snapped so far, nothing out of place,” says Kurogane, to distract him, because everything he can feel so far suggests most of the hardware is intact. He spreads his fingers flat into the slots between Fai’s ribs, feels them undulate as he breathes, and there is nothing broken in the artifice that moves smoothly beneath his hand. “This is to check against the scan, but looks like it’s just gonna be the arm you need replacing.” Small mercy, that; the kind of surgery Fai would need to patch up his ribs or lung isn’t pretty.

“That’s what they thought when they cut it off me at the scene,” says Fai thinly. “It wasn’t responding, but I could still feel it, so they said I might not need surgery.”

Kurogane just grunts at that, because yeah, EMTs are literal lifesavers and he’s done enough training he could be one, but he knows more about prosthetics than a whole squad of them put together. “Everything I can feel says your hardware is fine. Socket looks alright too,” he adds, after a few minutes of poking around in it with a series of fine-tipped probes, listening for any discordant sounds in the soft _clink_ of metal against metal and any noises of pain Fai might make at the touch of the tip to any exposed wires; he finds none, and that’s even better news. “Give me a week, and I’ll have a better arm for you than the best the Ceresian army could buy.”

“You sound very sure, Kurogane,” and his name sounds almost like a question in that husky voice. Something like hope flickers across pale features, quickly schooled; as though Fai is too aware he might be disappointed.

“I know what I’m talking about, _Fai_ ,” he retorts, because he doesn’t play fucking games, and he means everything he says besides.

“Somehow, I believe you,” says Fai softly, and maybe blue eyes don’t look so tired anymore.

“You should.” He snaps the gloves off then, tosses them in the trash-bin clipped to the side of his repair kit. He didn’t need most of it, which means he dragged six trays of tools out here for nothing, but it’s better to have it and not need it then to need it in the first place; some of the things in his drawers are more for emergency extraction than repair, and there’s not much Kurogane wouldn’t do to fix a situation before he has to use them. “When you get out of here later this week, come and see me at Piffle Corp’s R & D. I’ll fix you up better than you were before the accident.”

“I believe that too.” D’Fluorite— _Fai_ is looking at him properly now, unbroken eye contact and his face naked beneath the bruising. “Thank you, Kurogane.”

“Don’t thank me,” grunts Kurogane, because gratitude is not something he’s comfortable with. “I haven’t done anything yet.”

* * *

When Fai walks slowly up the steps to Piffle Corp’s main office —a bigger building than any he’s seen before, which is impressive considering Piffle Corp owns every square inch of this whole satellite planet— six days later, it’s with his sleeve flapping empty at his side threatening to tip him off balance more than his jangling nerves, but no one is staring at least, like they were on the subrail; small mercies are not something he can sneer at, not after his face was plastered over every news broadcast this tiny tech-planet calls its own and then some besides.

Still, the ladies at the reception desk are friendly enough, and maybe men with missing arms aren’t too unusual a sight here, or maybe their manners are far too genteel to comment on it, because not a one says a single thing but to give him directions to the R & D labs and a visitor’s pass. He rejects the offer of a hovercart ride and takes the long way, walking down winding halls that branch out into pods, glass menageries of plant-life peppered between them to splash green through the clean and sterile hallways. It looks friendlier than the hospice at least, and Fai’s legs could use the stretching; too long in a bed is no good for anyone, and it’s good to be walking again, no matter how lopsided.

The signing is easy to follow, and it’s only ten minutes before he reaches what he seeks, _Piffle Corp Research and Development:_ _Prosthesis and Artifice Dept._ blazoned across one wall in a display of silvery holotext that warps in and out of the six common languages in this part of the colonised galaxies. Fai can only read four languages of six, but it’s enough to tell him this is where Suwano will be. _Kurogane_ , says a voice in his head, and prompts an image of that handsome scowl and those sharp eyes to flick across his mind’s eye, but Fai is very good at ignoring things and gives it no more thought than he should.

Fai doesn’t wait for an invite; the chirpy Miss Daidouji he spoke to on the callnet last night had suggested he march right in, because _Kurogane is so grumpy when he’s working that sometimes he won’t even answer if you knock; best to just go on in and announce yourself_ , so that’s what he does, and Fai gets maybe three steps in the door before he stops, still and startled in the doorway as his eyes widen and his mouth dries up.

Suwano— _Kurogane_ is working, yes, hunched over a bench covered in stark metal parts and glistening synthcable roping, and there is a complete and perfect order to every piece of prosthetic tech laid out before him like clockwork on velvet, everything gleaming and bright beneath the dozen or so hoverlights that drift above him in slow orbit; but that is not what catches Fai’s eye, stutters his breath and hooks it in his chest where his bruised ribs shudder with the effort to breathe it out. It’s the breadth of those powerful shoulders and the sweat that gleams on furrows of scar tissue, pricked by the heat of the lights as they glow, and Fai watches the idle trail of a beading droplet as it slides slowly down a spine rippled with cicatrices, flushed warm and darkly-pink against tan skin. It’s the rough knot of denim coveralls pushed down and bunched about the incline of Kurogane’s waist, sleeves draping loose down his sides, and how the heavy shift of muscle as Kurogane works at his table flows smooth beneath skin that is crosshatched with scores of past hurts, old and healed and evidence of the worst kind of damage Fai has seen etched into human flesh.

“I had a partial spinal column replacement when I was nine,” says Kurogane bluntly, without looking up. In the humming silence of the lab, his words echo, his voice harsh. “It was one of the first successful prosthetic transplants on someone my age; they were surprised I made it through having all twelve of my thoracic vertebrae replaced, and two of my lumbar.” He says it like the news presenter gave the forecast last night: blandly, as though speaking of something worth only mild interest. “The surgery wasn’t really clean, and the doctors were pretty desperate to get it done, so I scarred up a bit, and I’ve had to have a fair bit of work over the years getting stuff replaced, so.” He shrugs one shoulder in a careless roll, leaning back on his stool to twist about and catch Fai’s eye, and the hoverlights drift out in a wider orbit when he flicks his fingers at them, floating well above head height as Kurogane stands.

“How—?”

“Shattered my spine jumping off a balcony,” is the brusque response. “Fell three stories, hit a tree, landed in the garden of our apartment complex. Punctured a lung, bruised my liver; had to get my spleen replaced when it burst. Broke my left arm in three places, too.” Kurogane shrugs back into his coveralls under Fai’s watchful gaze, buttoning up grey denim with quick, graceful movements of fingers that should be too big and clumsy to be so skilled.

“Why jump?” asks Fai, when he can breathe again, and is unprepared for the disparaging snort that meets his horror.

“Building was on fire— it was jump or be burned alive. What the hell else was I supposed to do?” Kurogane snorts again, louder, and his mouth twists with something that was never bitterness. “That’s not a good way to die, so I took my chances with the leap.” Kurogane cracks his neck to the side, rolling his shoulders; a dull _pop_ rings out across the room as he shakes his arms out. “You checked out of the hospice alright?”

“Huh? Oh, yes,” says Fai slowly, still reeling. “But you—”

“But nothing,” says Kurogane curtly. “I’m still here, aren’t I?” The look on his face is dark and hard, set with a determination Fai remembers from his first few months of rehab, clenching his false fingers like a man crawling through broken glass and forcing them to his shaking will. There’s nothing in those eyes that says this man was ever broken, no matter the damage he once took, and nothing that is anything close to self-pity. For someone like Fai —who once spent three weeks staring at a blank wall, fingers bloodless and shaking as they tangled in bandages, before he could even stand the thought of getting out of bed— it’s a hard thing to see, maybe; but it’s not a _bad_ thing, either.

Fai breathes out, heavy and slow. “I guess so.” There’s no guessing about it, really, considering the huff of almost-laughter that earns him. If he were to ask anything like _are you alright_ , he’s sure to get a less than friendly look from stern features that seem carved into that striking face, and Fai has no doubt those eyes are sharp enough to make it cut.

“Come on then,” says Kurogane, jerking his head towards a reclining chair towards the back of the room. It’s fitted out with padded seating and platforms bolted to its sides, the most intricate toolkit Fai has ever seen spread open at its side and shining with potential. “Let’s get you fixed up with your new arm already.”

The installation goes as smoothly as these things can, and the prosthesis this man has crafted for him is a masterwork of cables and hydraulics, naked and gleaming under the hot glow of hoverlights; sweat warms Fai’s skin and wets the hair that tangles at the nape of his neck as Kurogane ratchets his arm into place, connections and cables both pinning his new limb to its waiting socket in slow, creeping stages. “Almost done,” says Kurogane, on the twentieth connection, and Fai grits his teeth at the pulse of sensation as nerve meets wiring and spikes sensation through fingers he thought lost years ago. “Almost done,” says Kurogane again on the thirtieth, and Fai’s breathing is a straining tangle in his throat, his belly rolling beneath the heavy weight of a gloved hand burning hot on his skin as Kurogane holds him steady and flat against the recliner, and when Fai grabs a broad shoulder and squeezes his fingers into denim at the final jerking zap of all his nerves firing at once he is pleased to earn a grunt of surprise at the force he brings to bear.

“ _Now_ are we done?” he gasps out, and if he’s breathless, well, he has an excuse.

“You tell me,” says Kurogane, and grins, and the sheer _charm_ of it transforms his face completely; makes him someone different than what Fai first expected seeing that hard face and those sharp eyes. “Go on. Move your fingers for me.”

They move perfectly, sweetly, the soft hum of hydraulics and synthcable and wire-to-nerve connections flowing together in a symphony of technical engineering, and the tears that spring to Fai’s eyes beneath the triumphant squeeze of fingers he’d thought he’d lost for a second time roll down his face unheeded. There’s something loose and trembling swooping in his chest that doesn’t hurt at all. He feels… he feels _whole_ again.

“You still need a skin,” says Kurogane, not ungently, sitting back and wiping the sweat from his forehead with the denim of his sleeve where it bunches at his elbow. There’s pleasure in his face from a hard job well done, and Fai warms beneath it like the glow of the hoverlights, a prickling heat that tingles down his spine and all through his ribs, real and prosthetic, leaving his heart fluttering beneath its weight. “It’s waterproofed and completely insulated, but it’ll look naked without it. We can get you sprayed down with nanosilicate skintoner, have you all wrapped up and ready to go in about three hours or so. You won’t tan in sunlight, just so you know,” he adds in warning, and that makes Fai laugh because _really_.

“I kind of like it like this,” is what he says when Kurogane takes his hand to haul him up off the recliner, the whole length of his arm a shining, hand-constructed sculpture of synthetic muscle and carbonite bone. It’s beautiful. The sensation of Kurogane’s hand warm and solid against the pressure sensors in his fingertips, in his palm, feels unlike anything Fai has ever felt before, realer than the last touch he had by far. It’s not something he wants to let go of.

“Heh,” says Kurogane. He looks pleased, the quirk of his mouth ticking up into a half-smile almost as striking as his grin— more so, perhaps, in a different way entirely. “You can leave it, if you want; it’ll work fine without the skin. People will stare, though.”

“Let them,” says Fai, dizzy with boldness. “Don’t care. I’m not broken any more —you fixed me up, better than I used to be— and I want everyone to see it.”

He’s not expecting the sharp tug on his hand, the pull jolting all the way up his arm in a blur of sensation that makes his breath catch short and urgent in his chest, and the look Kurogane gives him is almost heavy enough to buckle his knees. “ _You were never broken_.” It’s almost a rumble, the words low and dark, and Fai feels it in his chest like he feels it in his metal bones, something ringing and sharp— something he isn’t going to forget. “You were never broken,” says Kurogane again, softer this time, and the quiet determination in his words is something Fai has to believe.

“Thank you,” says Fai quietly, because what else can he say; his breath shudders out in something like a sigh, and his hand— his hand feels _warm_ for the first time in years. “I feel like I should buy you a drink,” he adds then, the words tripping euphoric off his tongue, and almost immediately he wishes he had not said them; as kind is Kurogane is, as kind as Kurogane has been to him, there is a very fine line between being bold and being stupidly reckless, and it’s the latter that’s gotten him into enough trouble as it is. But Kurogane’s fingers are still tangled in his own, and the way he blinks as if startled is enough to give Fai a kick-start of adrenaline, spiking bravery into his blood and teasing a smile to his face. “Please. If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t,” begins Kurogane, and looks down, startling again at the sight of his fingers in Fai’s grip. “I don’t drink alcohol,” he finishes, looking up and lifting his other hand flat and level. It does not tremble, steady and still as though carved in stone, a perfect mastery of self-control. “I need steady hands for work.”

“Oh.” Fai swallows.

“Not coffee either,” continues Kurogane, that half-smile still lingering. “Too much caffeine. But you can take me out for dinner, if you like.” His eyes are still sharp, still piercing, but it doesn’t feel so bad to be pinned under that gaze. “There’s an okonomiyaki restaurant three blocks from here, on the forty-third floor of the SkyMall. I know the guy who runs it— it’s pretty decent.”

“I’d like,” starts Fai, throat tight; he has to cough to clear it, a half-tug of his hand against the fingers still curled through his own, pressure humming gently all through his artificial bones. “I’d like that.”

“Good,” says Kurogane, nodding firmly as his face slips back to sternness, and he loosens his hand from Fai’s hold with something almost like reluctance. “I’ve still got a lot to do today, and you need to rest,” he says bluntly. “Reconnection takes a lot out of you. You’re gonna have ghost sensation echoing out from your connection points for the next couple of hours, probably for the next day or two at least, and that’s not something you want to deal with on a date.”

 _A date_ , thinks Fai, dizzy all over again with the thrill of it. “Right,” is what he says though, because he is— _was_ a soldier. He can do discipline.

“I don’t work weekends though,” and the brisk tone in Kurogane’s voice is only half a mask for the dull pink flush that colours his ears. He’s blushing, oh, and it’s _adorable_. “You’ve got my number.” Fai does too, on the directions the hospital gave him, written into his discharge paperwork. And besides, Piffle Corp have put him up in their swankiest hotel, all expenses paid on the company tab; he’s pretty sure he could ask the world of Miss Daidouji right now and she’d hand it over without batting an eyelash, so getting Kurogane’s number is probably the least he could ask of her.

“I’ll call,” says Fai, and doesn’t make it a question. “On Sunday.”

“Saturday,” is the flat retort, Kurogane folding his arms and looking down at Fai coolly. His ears are still pink, though. “I visit my parents on Sunday evenings.” His face is perfectly stern, even if the corner of his mouth is twitching a little, like a grin is itching to break free. Fai knows the feeling. “Get out of here,” says Kurogane dismissively, half-waving a hand at him; above his head, the hoverlights hum back into motion. “I’ve got a list of repair work as long as your arm to get on with, and you need to get some sleep while your prosthetic runs its nerve sync cycle. You should do some fine control practice later; try using a fork or writing your name with a stylus without crushing it.”

“I’ll do that,” says Fai, smiling, and heads for the door without looking back. He doesn’t need to; he’ll see Kurogane again soon enough, and that thought alone makes his steps lighter than they’ve been for years.

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you'd like to vote for this fic, please head on over to the KuroFai Community on dreamwidth; the voting post is [here](http://kurofai.dreamwidth.org/85156.html)!


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